Archive for the ‘Searching for…’ Category

The Museum is asking for your help to identify displaced children and document what became of these young Holocaust survivors after the war.

“They are the most vulnerable victims of war and genocide. Between 1933 and 1945, millions of children were displaced as a result of persecution by the Nazis and their collaborators. After World War II, relief agencies photographed some of the children who survived to help find their families. Now, more than 65 years later, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is working to discover what became of these young survivors.”

On the museum’s website, you can browse the names of the children or view their pictures. Please contact the museum at RememberMe@ushmm.org or click on “I remember this child!” button near his/her individual photo if you recognize a child or see yourself in the pictures. The images for this project have been provided by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives and The Museum of Jewish Heritage, A Living Memorial to the Holocaust.

The photo above shows Berthe Moscowicz, who now goes by the name Bracha Aris and lives in Israel. She came across her own picture in the photo gallery and identified herself.

Here is a query from a reader. Please reply to her directly or comment to this post.

My name is Charla R. Malamed. I am a doctoral student at Derner Institute, at Adelphi University on Long Island, New York.

I am currently conducting a research project, in which I am interested in learning about the transmission of Holocaust WWII experience across the generations, and about how that experience influences the individual’s relationships with the self and with others, specifically with a German/Jewish individual (German non-Jewish, if the individual is Jewish; Jewish, if the individual is German non-Jewish).

I want to understand how cultural and familial memory of the Holocaust influences the development of the self and the ways in which an individual is able to relate to the ‘other;’ that is, how has the Holocaust affected Jewish/German non-Jewish relations today, in the 3rd generation?

To be eligible to participate, you must:

(1) Be a grandchild of a someone who lived during the Nazi regime in one of the Nazi-occupied territories

(2) have had, or currently have, a meaningful and ongoing relationship with a German non-Jewish individual (if you are Jewish) or a Jewish individual (if you are German and non-Jewish).

Anyone who is interested will be asked to participate in a 75-90 minute interview, as well as complete a pencil-and-paper questionnaire. All the information resulting from this research will be anonymous.

German-Jews in exile, who fled Germany to escape the Holocaust, shared many memories of their childhood. They remembered friends, the language spoken and the foods they ate. They remembered bullying, being cast aside, harassed or worse.

But childhood memories were also filled with warmth, of remembering a first day in school. German school children carry cardboard cones, filled with sweets and little treats, to their first day in school. The so-called Schultüten are a century-old tradition. There’s not a child in Germany, then or now, that has not carried his or her precious load to school.

That old tradition that unites all school children led to the idea to launch a unique remembrance project, initiated by Carolyn Naumann and co-organized by the Anne-Frank-Zentrum and the Humboldt University in Berlin: “The sugar cone project” — a collection of photographs of German Jewish schoolchildren just before they fled Nazi Germany into exile and their stories of life before the war. The idea for the project was born while Naumann accompanied German Jewish refugees on their federally funded visit to their hometown, Berlin, where they shared such childhood memories as standing side-by-side with their non-Jewish school friends, all proudly displaying their cones. (In the picture, the brochure of the project, showing Heinz Goldstein on the left with an unknown friend, ca. 1935, in the Jewish Elementary School Fasanenstrasse in Berlin).

The collection of pictures showing six-years-olds and their sugar cones — just before they were deemed unfit to stay (or were sent to their death) — can help school children of today understand the realities of that time, the brutality of daily struggles, when people were clinging to even a sliver of normalcy.

If you have photos of that time, showing Jewish schoolchildren with their sugar cones, or would like to share your story, please contact Carolyn Naumann, who is also searching for teachers that are interested in the project and would like to help.

I am a German writer of biographies and am researching for years about Paul Huldschinsky (at left, a sketch drawn by Paul’s father, Oscar Huldschinsky].

Paul Huldschinsky fled Germany in 1938 and emigrated to California. He was responsible for the interior decorations of Thomas Mann’s house in Pacific Palisades, and as Art Director, he received the Oscar for the film “Gaslight” with Ingrid Bergmann.

I am looking for photos or pictures in magazines or newspapers of him and his work.

I am searching for the lost art of David Friedmann (1893-1980). He was a student of Hermann Struck (etching) and Lovis Corinth (painting). He achieved acclaim and a great reputation as a painter known for his portraits drawn from life. His talent for quick sketching gave rise to an additional career as a freelance artist in 1924-1933 for Berlin’s great newspapers and the radio program magazine, Der Deutsche Rundfunk. He was a leading Pressezeichner of the 1920’s and portrayed hundreds of celebrated personalities from the Arts, Music, Theater, Sports, and Politics.

He fled to Prague with his family at the end of 1938, only to be deported to the Lodz Ghetto in October 1941. The Gestapo looted his oeuvre in 1941 in Berlin and again in Prague under the auspices of the Deutsches Reich. His works comprising of 2000 etchings, lithographs, drawings, and paintings are lost without a trace along with art that was sold or displaced as a consequence of war. Some art was saved by fleeing refugees from Hitler and scattered to unknown places throughout the world.

However, hundreds of portraits still remain elusive, including the twelve-year old Yehudi Menuhin performing at his first concert in Berlin. The drawing appeared on April 13, 1929, the day after his concert and may have been published in any number of newspapers throughout Germany. Other “known” lost portraits are: Albert Einstein, Rabindranath Tagore, Ramsey MacDonald, Edouard Herriot, Thomas Mann, Martin Buber, Max Brod, Carl Flesch, Raya Garbusova, Bronislaw Huberman, Jan Kubelik, Edwin Fischer, Rachelle Shubow, Eduard Rothauser, Benjamino Gigli, Mattia Battistini, Max Schmeling, and Ernst Udet.

The portraits were autographed by the subject and signed by the artist in a variety of styles and signatures: D. Friedmann, Dav. Friedmann, DaFrie, Fried, DF, Fr.Dav, or just Friedmann.

I would be grateful for leads to artwork by David Friedmann. My aim is to create a catalogue of his works, evidence of his brilliant career the Nazis could not destroy. Thus, I appeal to the public to join my search and preserve the legacy of this remarkable artist.

My father did 2 years hard labor in Christianstadt/Germany (Krzystkowice/Poland) for die Dynamit Aktiengesellschaft during World War II.

I am looking for anybody who had a relative or knows somebody else, who did hard labor there as well for die Dynamit Aktiengesellschaft during the War. Please contact Harm Karst Johannes Breman, Zwolle, Holland